His World: 2nd Ignition
by Illuminet
Summary: Set during GGXrd's story mode right after Sol and That Man break through the Cradle's Absolute Defense: Felion and Justice's unveiling. Sol reflects on Elphelt's reasoning to save him from following Justice's body to the Backyard. He starts to compare that reason with a promise Frederick made to Aria. (COMPLETE)


His World: 2nd Ignition

Written By Illuminet

Disclaimer: Characters from the Guilty Gear series are the rightful property of Arc System Works.

:xXx:

This was it. Justice. The first sentient Command Type Gear. Sol didn't expect to see her ever again until that particular piece of info dropped by Zato-1 when he revealed the Conclave's interest in the Art of Resurrection, along with the plethora of other info gleaned by Ky's airship making its way to Zepp. Yet here she stood, her body anyway. But Sol wasn't in the best of shape, since a majority of his power in his current Human form had been used up in tandem with his nemesis, That Man, in destroying the barrier known as Absolute Defense: Felion. To go Gear form was extremely dangerous in his current state, and he hoped it wouldn't need to come to that: Justice stood but did not move. She may have been resurrected in body, but was not awaken from her stasis. If he could just destroy her body completely, it would be like killing two birds with one stone, as the Conclave would go down with her.

That Man had been thwarted from keeping her rooted to the physical world, no thanks to Bedman's interference by teleporting them away from Justice's location. She would disappear into the Backyard once more. The field of space that would be taken was steadily enveloping her and spreading outward.

"Get out of there, Frederick! You'll be swallowed by the Backyard!" Dr. Paradigm warned him with a heeding call. Sol gritted his teeth.

"I can still function in there! I'm going to follow them!" He began to conjure up the feelings of when he first stepped into the Backyard. The first generation Valentine had escaped to there when cornered, and Sol, Dr. Paradigm, and their ally Izuna had gained access thanks to That Man. The dense flow of information that the Backyard held was enough to obliterate normal Humans, but Sol had survived it for an extended amount of time. No doubt Dr. Paradigm realized it but even he knew Sol was in worse condition than the previous time.

"You fool! You can't, not in your condition!" His words fell on deaf ears. Sol stood up, but nearly lurched forward in fatigue. His eyes remained set as the fiery golden aura of the Backyard was nearly upon him. But then something firm and soft tackled him and he was soon being led away from that aura. Elphelt Valentine was saving him again. To him, it was a second time too many.

"What the hell are you doing?! Let go of me!" Sol demanded. Elphelt shook her head.

"I won't!" She declared, even as she could feel the reverberating growl rumbling from his chest, his anger apparent in his gaze. She continued to speak.

"Sol, even if you manage to beat Justice again, the Backyard would have already taken you in completely and there would be no escape! I can't let you risk it!" She tried to be as rational as possible, tapping into his own rationale. Sol gritted his teeth, but the force of power used earlier affected him more than he cared to admit. It was trying enough to keep his sword in his grasp.

"Let me go!" He demanded again, aggravated as he stared at her face, her eyes on the brink of shedding tears and her cheeks flushed. Her eyes held so much concern and again Aria floated into his thoughts but he willed them away.

"No! I won't, no matter what!" She denied him again, arms tightening around his torso to press him closer to herself. No matter that pleasant pressure of a woman against his back, the feelings were swept under by anger.

"You bitch…" He uttered. She held him even tighter.

"Don't you get it, Sol? You go there and you won't see any of your friends ever again!" She stated, her voice resolute. Sol's body calmed now in her grip and he wasn't looking at her again. He started to ponder just when he started to get weak. Was taking in Sin to raise him the start of it? Was it when he decided to fight the Gears on the side of the Humans? Or had he always been weak? The man known as Sol Badguy had been a fear to deal with because of his great strength. But what could be done when all that strength couldn't solve his problems? When he broke through The Cradle, Justice nor the Conclave were destroyed with it. When he defeated Ramlethal, he could not stop the Cradle's destruction of the residence of Babylon. When defeating the first Valentine, he couldn't help but be trapped in the Backyard and saved by That Man himself, his hated nemesis. When he defeated Dizzy, he had the strength to end her but her pleas caused him to break his own oath for the first time: Kill all Gears. When he defeated Justice, he believed her dead for good yet things came full circle to this moment.

As they flew further and further away from the blast, Sol pondered Elphelt's words and the parallels with Aria. It brought back a memory from long ago, one Sol had only recently recalled, as lately many memories of the past for him were starting to dredge up.

_The Gear Project Laboratory, September 10, 2016_

"_Aria, why didn't you tell me about this…!" Frederick growls, arm extended and hand grasping onto Aria's shoulder._

"_If I had…you would have dropped everything just to find a cure." She responded breathily._

"_Of course I would!" He didn't want to, but his hand was tightening on her shoulder. He wasn't trying to cause her pain, but he was so aggravated by the tempest of emotions swirling in him, all of which were negative. He wanted to hold her because it felt like if he didn't, she would simply be whisked away out of thin air. It might as well have been that way to him no matter how illogical such a thing really was._

"_It would have worried me…if you did that, I would be alone again, and I didn't want that." she responded, her gaze still cast away from his piercing eyes._

"_So what?! Don't you realize that when I find the cure you would stay with me…we would have all the time in the world!" He just couldn't understand her reasoning._

"_You don't get it…Frederick, there is no cure for what I have. This infection…I don't have much time left. I wanted to spend what remaining time I had left…with you." The tears began dripping down her pretty face. Frederick snarled in disbelief._

"_Shut your mouth! There is always a way to fix things! I'll figure it out…!" His eyes grew with a realization._

"_Let's put you under cryosleep. Maybe a cure doesn't exist yet. But there will be…someday…I'll…" He was unbelievably gentle as his wide hands cupped her cheeks, his thumbs wiping the tears away. A watery laugh escaped her parted lips._

"_Maybe. But then I'd just be alone again." She responded, her smaller hands going over his larger ones._

"_Not dying isn't the same as living. Being alive is about having new experiences…" She smiled as she looked at him, her gaze full of love._

"_It would be like dying if I wasn't able to be with my friends…especially you." She squeezed his hands firmly._

"_I want you there in the end to see me off…that's what would make me happy." Her lips brushed his knuckles. Frederick gritted his teeth._

"_No! You can find new life in the future…you only need to live now!" He reprimanded, not wanting to hear those words. Aria was his world, and she meant more to him than anything. Aria looked at him squarely now._

"_Do you remember that time? About our conversation on wanting to be a bird? You said it yourself…turning into something else would be the same as dying, right?" She could tell by his own look that he did recall when he had said that to her._

"_Like you said, this world is where I belong…and I'm the heroine of my own story, so you're not allowed to tell me what to do." Her tone was one of finality. His hands were on her arms swiftly and by his strength he yanked her up to his face. Anger and despair continue to cloud his eyes._

"_Shut up! This isn't okay at all! It can't be how it ends!" Despite his glaring, she continued to stare into his eyes with her unwavering resolve._

"_Don't be selfish. Try to listen to someone else for once." She responded gently but firmly._

"_You're selfish!" He said vehemently._

"…_please." She said softly, trying to pacify him. He shook his head fiercely._

"_Enough of this! My world is one where YOU exist, and I won't let ANYBODY take that away from me, even you!" Their noses were nearly touching now._

"_I'll fight for my world even if it kills me! Until I'm dead, I'm not giving up! I won't listen to you anymore!" He touched his forehead to her own, as if trying to will his beliefs into her. Logically he knew it was impossible because Humans couldn't control other Humans since they all had free will. But for once he wanted to have that kind of control. But it would never be so simple in this day and age._

"_Frederick…that world is coming to an end…" Those words made him sober. Her gentleness curbed his anger and he released her, clenched fists at his side. He had no choice and he knew it. He had always known it. He had no steam to combat her any further. He just wanted to hold her now and he did so with gentle firmness, her head nuzzling against his broad chest._

"…_I don't have any family…and was always kind of a bookworm…" She began to pour her heart out to him._

"_I didn't enjoy studying…but I didn't want to get left behind." She had grasped a fistful of his shirt, her fist laying over his heart._

"_I believed that if I just kept to myself and didn't trust anyone, then nobody could hurt me ever." She continued, and Frederick was amazed that she kept her voice so level. He felt the moisture of hot tears rolling from her cheek to eventually be absorbed in the wrinkly fabric of his collared shirt. There was the sting of tears in his own eyes but they hadn't fallen._

"_But that made my world so cold, small, and dark. I never ever felt alive there…" Her voice seemed to crack a little this time as she continued._

"_I didn't even have friends until I was in college. A pretty sad existence, right?" She clung to him tighter, and it caused him to hug her more to his body._

"_But then I met _, and you…I even fell in love!" Now the words she spoke were tinged with joy and hope._

"_For the first time in my life, I found someone to care about, and that person was you…I was so happy!" their gazes met. A lone tear slid down his cheek, yet he never realized it._

"_Aria…" He wanted to say that they were very much the same, because they were. Birds of a feather flock together. Much of her words reflected his own beliefs. For he had no family to call his own until he made friends with _ and Aria, who had started to become his family. Soon one was going to be gone from his life and he just couldn't stand it._

"_Once I'm gone, I'm worried you'll be alone too…" She interrupted him. His mouth drew into a frown, a grimace on his face. Yet he remained still and let her finish._

"_So please, promise me…" She drew his face down to her own, their lips about to meet. Tension melted from his face and filled with calm. If it was her wish to let things be as they were, he would abide by them._

"_Promise me you won't be alone."_

'That's right…it was the tenth of September…in the year 2016…Aria had revealed it…' Sol had been lost in thought longer than expected, having missed as Elphelt used a tremendous amount of power to jet them just shy out of the range of the Backyard swallowing them. Somehow the force had ended up with Sol on his back and Elphelt in his arms. Her eyes were closed as her body laid prone on top of him, her head resting against his chest. She had knocked herself out, he wagered. He could hear several voices on communication lines erupting all at once and asking if they were alright.

"Yeah. We're good…just shut up and get us already." He grunted. He lay there with Elphelt and waited for an airship to drop down and get them. Those on the ground already, like Leo Whitefang and Dr. Paradigm, were starting to make their way towards the two. Sol knew that the nation's forces failed in carrying out their objective and would have to figure something else out. His thoughts went to Elphelt and her reasoning for saving him, again.

'Aria made me…no, him, promise to never be alone. By the logic they shared, Frederick and Sol aren't the same. One was a Human, the other a Gear. One is dead, the other alive in a hell that the former created…' He wasn't sure why he was allowing this closeness but didn't have the will to muster against it at the moment.

'But maybe subconsciously a part of me is living out that promise he made to her…to never be alone. Or is Ky the one whose right for once? Maybe we really are the same person despite the conversion from Human to Gear, and I'm still Frederick. I guess I do have friends of my own now after all and not mere acquaintances.' He wasn't sure much of what to believe anymore, but for the past couple of centuries nearly, a man named Sol Badguy roamed the Earth. Like Frederick and Aria, he kept all people at arm's length and never got close to anyone and it did make his world small. Unlike them though, it was harder to simply die and continue living that way. The route he was on now was inevitable, he wagered. So then where was Elphelt to stand in all this? Was the Universal Will, This –Mother- of the Valentines, or whatever apparition it may have been now, toying with him by birthing these Aria based look-a-likes? Perhaps it had succeeded in heading towards a particular end by bringing a possible weakness to fester in Sol like a sore.

Sol didn't know. But a part of him felt that maybe it would be okay to get closer to someone like Elphelt and move on from Aria, because Aria belonged to Frederick and their world was not this one. He and Elphelt, along with all the people of this time, it was this world they belonged. But Sol would have to remain on guard. He had kept Elphelt away and didn't know what it was about this world that made it precious to her. He would have to get the answer out of her later. Deep down he kept the fact that she and Ramlethal were still Valentines and trying to destroy the World somehow, close to his heart.

He hoped she would wake up soon enough. Time wasn't on their side after all, now that the body of Justice was free.

:FIN:

Note: Yeah, I know I should get to writing up some new chapters for my other stories but Guilty Gear Xrd had such a nicely done story mode I just couldn't help myself. I guess Sol x Elphelt as a possible couple is growing on me.


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